The best places to get your books

When I moved last March,
I brought my kiddie bookshelves with me.
The only size I have space for in my room.
They were half empty, then, because I
moved some of my books back into my
old room at my mom's place. The shelves
are full again.

The StrandThe one
I go to is on Fulton St, a minute's walk from
South Street Seaport; 6 from the
World Trade Center. Like Soho,
it sells publisher's seconds, these for
half price. It's big. They have $1 sections,
$3 paperbacks. They sell music, calendars.
I don't like this as much as the others, because of
its size. Messy orginazation on such a large
scale throws me off. I feel like I'll never
be able to properly sift through everything.
However, I must confess to getting lost for 5
hours there once. And this is where I bought my
dictionary for $15, a 6,000 page edition from
Random House. (It comes with short Spanish,
French, Italian, and German to English pages
in the back, and then English to all those languages).
I like to yanked my arms off, carrying that home.

The Great Grand E2 LottoThis one
is a great idea, a unique way of finding the
books you want plus the worn and used look.
The only hitch, of course, is that you have to return the book in the end. On the other hand, this is a terrific way
of turning your own clean books into worn
and loved relics.

I am an unrepentant bibliophile--from reading, to the style and texture of a certain edition, to the illustrations, to the sheer strangeness of a certain title, my room is crammed full of books, and it's gotten to the point that I've started taking over my parent's basement.

Best times to get to the discard sale is within one to two hours of opening on the first day of sale, and in the last few hours of the sale's run. Arriving early allows the viewer to get any "necessities", but I have been able to tote away boxes of books on the last day for no other reason that the library ran out of storage for the books. Better yet, if a cheap attack hits just scan for unpopular books you might want and get the favorites first. It's likely these books will be waiting at closing time. You'll find soon enough that most people are at the sale for Harlequins and travelogues, not Thomas Mann and Magnus Mills.

These same tips apply to closeout stores and thrift shops, but in these cases books will be more expensive yet in resale condition. Have fun reading or getting school textbooks, and stay away from the high school student workers running those book carts down the hallways in top gear.

As the owner of a second-hand bookstore/book exchange, I can only recommend (nay beg) that you patronise these worthy establishments.

Why pay the extra money over and above goodwill? Well, firstly, any owner worth his or her salt will have the store set out in a way that you can find things easily.

Secondly, I can assure you that apart from antiquarians, few second-hand booksellers make much money - they do what they do for the pure joy of being surrounded by books. This means they'll generally know what they've got, and where it is, so you don't have to spend hours failing to find what you're looking for.

Thirdly, if they haven't got what you want, right now, they'll move heaven and earth to find it. These people haunt auctions and garage sales, publishers remaindered book skips, church, school and Red Cross fairs. They network, and can call on widely spread resources. They will buy a large lot, for a single book that they know a customer wants, because they can probably sell the rest.